


The Devil You Know

by reapertownusa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Daddy Kink, Dubious Consent, Hurt Dean Winchester, Knifeplay, M/M, Nudity, One Shot, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Torture, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-08
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:01:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapertownusa/pseuds/reapertownusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU take on the Alastair fight scene at the church during ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’. This time Dean doesn’t get off easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil You Know

**Author's Note:**

> The first portion of action and dialogue is taken verbatim from ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’.
> 
> Warnings: Dub-con and semi-consenting torture.

When doors flew open without anyone touching them, it meant the shit was about to hit the fan. That was Dean’s professional opinion. The demon that swaggered up the steps wasn’t the usual brand of cocky dick they had to put up with. This one wasn’t just pretending to be powerful. Like Lilith, it was wielding the real stuff by the bucket loads.

Before his brother even tried, he knew that Sam wasn’t up to taking this one and he didn’t want his brother to push himself far enough to try. For some reason though, he couldn’t open his mouth to say as much. There was something about this demon he couldn’t place. Something so strongly familiar that it stopped him from even moving in to backup Sam.

It wasn’t until the demon pulled his brother down the stairs that Dean was jolted into action. He drew Ruby’s dagger and surged forward, but his thrust towards the demon was easily intercepted. The thing clutched his wrist with an iron grip, twisted him and forced him back into one of the church’s pillars, knocking the air from his lungs.

“Hello again, Dean,” the demon sneered, obviously pleased as hell with himself.

Dean’s brow knitted in confusion. If it was even possible, this day had just gone from bad to worse. Plenty of demons knew him. A hunter in hell was all kinds of fun to poke at, but this one wasn’t greeting him casually. He was too startled by the tone of familiarity and too busy struggling for recognition to fight back when he’d had half the chance.

As the demon’s fist rained down on him, he vaguely recognized the sound of Anna screaming. In the background he could just make out Ruby dragging the girl down the stairs. He trusted that bitch as far as he could throw Sam, but right now he wasn’t exactly in a position to be doing anything aside from bleeding. Another solid hit forced him to loose his grip on the dagger, but at this point he’d forgotten about it anyway.

“Come on. Don't you recognize me? Oh, I forgot - I'm wearing a pediatrician,” the demon replied smugly as he cocked back his fist again. Two more punches crushed against his face, further dazing him. “And we were so close...in hell.”

After the next punch the demon held back. Patiently it waited long enough to meet Dean’s eyes, holding them until the recognition surfaced. It came all right. Came like a fucking freight train straight from hell.

“Alastair,” Dean filled in without need for further prompting.

The taste of hot copper was filling his mouth and any form of rational thought momentarily ceased. He heard the familiar, pleased chuckle leave Alastair. It was the sound that assured that all was as the demon wanted it to be.

Dean knew Alastair’s true face. There were no words to describe it, but he had it permanently branded in his mind. This demon was one ugly son of a bitch. He could see every detail from memory as he met the eyes of the vessel before him.

As soon as he knew what he was looking at, he didn’t see the vessel anymore. Just Alastair. Another fist was driven hard into his face, but it didn’t mater.

For thirty years he had stared at Alastair’s face, his hands, his entire body covered in Dean’s hell bound soul’s proverbial blood. Begging, crying, dying every day at this demon’s hands. And learning. Studying.

He hadn’t even realized it at the time. Not until he had been unable to bear the endless suffering anymore. Not until he had cracked and took the blade into his own hand. It had been so easy. He knew all the moves by heart. His own torture had been his training. Once he was let free it was just going through the motions and Alastair approved. The bastard had been proud of him. The approval was one of many things he’d never found on earth.

Dean’s focus on the room currently around him had become so narrow that he hadn’t even seen Sam lunging at Alastair with the knife and neither had the demon himself. His brother did what he couldn’t and successfully drove the dagger deeply into Alastair’s shoulder. It was an action that Dean’s shocked brain barely registered.

”You're gonna have to try a whole lot harder than that, son.”

Alastair wasn’t impressed. It didn’t take Dean to see that, but Alastair was temporarily distracted. Now would be a damn good time to do something, but he was too shocked to move. It wasn’t the physical pain in his face or gut. It was the pain in his mind. In his soul. This wasn’t supposed to be happening here. Alastair wasn’t supposed to be here.

He looked to the floor desperately trying to regain focus. When large hands grasped his shoulder with a foreign gentleness, he looked up in confusion. Without thinking he had assumed it was Alastair, but it was Sam.

His little brother and Alastair belonged in two different worlds and he refused to think it possible for them to cross. That separation was one of the only things keeping his broken pieces together.

Sam helped him to his feet, met his eyes and looked towards the stained-glass window. Jumping through the glass off the second story of a church was the kind of dumb ass plan he’d come up with. But he didn’t have a better one.

Dean knew he had to get Sam out of here but beyond that his head was spinning too fast. Forty years of hell screamed to him that he couldn’t just stand up and walk away from Alastair. It didn’t even register as a possibility. You didn’t leave Alastair. He dismissed you when he was through with you.

He had hesitated too long. Without warning Sam was pulled away from him by an unseen force guided by Alastair and hurled into the closet that Anna had been hiding in. His brother’s head cracked mercilessly against the back wall and his long body collapsed in a mess on the floor beneath the neatly hung jackets. The doors to the closet were slammed shut before Dean could even force himself to move and Alastair didn’t skip a beat.

“Dean, it’s been a while. Not for you, but you know how time flies when you’re having fun in hell.”

“Screw you, Alastair,” he replied with all the bravado he could muster.

Alastair didn’t even acknowledge his efforts. No reason he should. He wasn’t even trying and Alastair had heard it all. Every wisecrack he could conjure, every insult he could scream, every way he could plead. Alastair knew it. Knew him better than Dean knew himself and as Alastair turned to face him, the son of a bitch just smiled knowingly.

“I hope you like the suit,” Alastair said with a hand that Dean knew wasn’t motioning towards the casual suit and dress shirt the body before him was wearing. The demon was talking about the body itself. “Picked it out just for you.”

“Some old pediatrician? You gotta check your notes. Not exactly a fantasy of mine.”

“I beg to differ, son.”

Dean swallowed hard and Alastair moved closer.

“Anna’s gone,” Dean threw out in a half ditch effort to pull the focus away from himself.

“I’ll get the girl when I’m good and ready for her.”

So this wasn’t just about Anna. Awesome. Dean moved his eyes back to the ground. It wasn’t only the physical advantage that Alastair held. It was the fact that Alastair damn near owned his soul. His being. The demon was all he had known for so long in ways so intimate that no one living on earth could conceive it. There was no true separation. In hell it all bled together.

“This whole in the flesh business is mighty cumbersome, wouldn’t you say?” Alastair continued. “You know, down in the pit it would have taken hours of these little love slaps before you’d be wearing that crimson on the outside.”

“Is that what this is? You thought you’d hop on up here for a little nooner torture session?”

“Oh they sent me up for the girl,” Alastair assured him. “But I’ve earned my coffee break. As for the torture, it’s not so fun when you only get to do it once. No chance to perfect your art. Luckily, I’m still holding a rack for you downstairs. If only these pesky angels would mind their proper boundaries. At least you know your place.”

At some point Alastair had moved in so close that Dean could feel the hot breath against his ear, but he wasn’t seeing the man. He was seeing what was inside. It was his nightmares and his dreams.

“I know you’d freeze solid up here without it, but all this fabric...it just gets in the way,” Alastair remarked as he flicked at Dean’s jacket. “Hides that lovely flesh.”

Dean gave only gave a restrained nod in reply. That was kind of the point. As many layers as he could get on. If he couldn’t stop himself from feeling like he was mentally splayed out for all the world to see at least he could put on as many physical barriers between himself and the world as he could find.

Part of him hated himself right now and part of him needed for someone else to take control. For this familiarity that there would be pain, but he wouldn’t have to be the one making the calls. He wouldn’t have to be the one everyone looked to. He wouldn’t have to be the one taking care of everyone.

He was Alastair’s and Alastair was here to remind him of just that, but he hadn’t forgotten. It didn’t matter what happened. He could never forget and as part of that Alastair didn’t have to voice what he wanted. Words were only a formality between them.

His nervous hands clenched as he shrugged off his blue jacket and slipped out of his first layered shirt. He didn’t bother to look back to Alastair before sliding his black t-shirt over his head.

He folded the discarded shirts not as a delay tactic, but because it was something to do. Something to fill his numb mind as he tried not to think about the fact that he was stripping for a demon in a church with a damn virgin Mary statue’s empty, bleeding eyes staring at him. He’d say he was going to hell, but been there done that. Had the t-shirt seared off him a thousand and one times.

Without warning Alastair grabbed his arm and wrenched his shoulder into full view. When his eyes followed Alastair’s he realized what the problem was. He’d forgotten Castiel’s faded handprint branded so clearly on his shoulder.

Alastair played over the scarring with Ruby’s bloodied dagger, not actually cutting, just making a point that he could. He wouldn’t put it past Alastair to gouge the whole damn thing off.

“Angels and their filthy hands,” Alastair sneered. “They had no right to mark my boy and here you are, now whoring your needy self out for them. Pathetic.”

Dean swallowed down the revulsion he felt towards himself when he realized that Alastair’s disapproval stung. Like he really gave a rat’s ass what anyone thought. Or so he’d like to think.

He tried to tell himself that it was hard not to feel the need to assure approval from the thing that had torn him apart for decades when he hadn’t been worthy of that approval. But a stronger man would have spit in Alastair’s face. His Dad had been that kind of man and he wished he was too, but he just wasn’t.

“They say it’s fate,” Dean replied. Despite the power he held over him, talking to Alastair was easy. There wasn’t anything they hadn’t already said to each other. “My destiny or some crap.”

At this point he didn’t believe that he was destined for anything but an eternity of struggling to please whoever happened to be the biggest dick looming over him at the moment. Right now that meant Alastair. If Alastair let him live soon it would be angels again. Hell, maybe Sam someday would go all dark side and take over this craphole of a world, then it would be his own little brother. His luck sucked that bad.

“I don’t exactly have a choice here.”

“Sins of the flesh,” Alastair replied by way of apparent forgiveness. “It makes you weak. It makes us all weak.” The demon caressed his bare arm with the blunt side of the cold blade of the knife. “I should slit your oversized brother’s throat while I have the chance. Boy’s getting mighty big for his britches.”

“He’s no threat to you,” Dean replied, probably a little too quickly. Not that Alastair didn’t already know his every weakness.

“No, but it would be good, wholesome, family entertainment,” Alastair said with an amused grin that dripped with malice. “But you know, I’m feeling charitable. Make me a better offer.”

Shame blushed Dean’s face. The blade suddenly bit into the tender skin of his shoulder and gave him a focus point. His heart was thundering in his chest. There was nothing he feared or needed more than Alastair. Right now, when nothing made sense Alastair was his one certainty.

“Take me.”

Again that smug chuckle. “Now you tell me how you can give me something that I already possess. I wasn’t salvaged from this frozen rock yesterday, Dean.”

“All of me. Right here. Whatever you want. Then you leave Sam alone.”

“You know, I could just strangle you with your own intestines and bring you back home.”

To illustrate his point, Alastair slowly drew the tip of the dagger with a surgical precision down the center of his exposed abdomen. Alastair stopped his steady cut just above Dean’s belt-line and tilted his head admiring the trail of crimson the dagger left in its wake.

He hissed at the pain but didn’t pull away. Dean knew his place in this and nothing Alastair could do to him here physically could compare to what he’d already done. Mentally, there was nothing left to break.

Dean’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. “You could,” he agreed through gritted teeth. “But we both know it wouldn’t last long. Those winged dicks would be down to crash the party before you could fasten the hooks.”

“That they would. Pesky angels. The egos on those winged rats... Always thinking you are, Dean.”

Despite the commendation a fist again caught his face. His shocked eyes looked back up to see Alastair shaking his head with a hint of disappointment.

“Focus, son.”

He realized that he’d let his eyes and attention wander to another place and time and instantly renewed his focus on the here and now. Regardless of how much now sucked, it wasn’t like the past he’d fallen back to was any better.

“Yes, sir.”

The words left his lips without him even thinking about them. They were a default reply drilled into him by Dad and meant for Dad alone. The smile on Alastair’s lips said that the demon knew it, but of course he did.

You couldn’t tear apart a man piece by piece, again and again, without learning a few things about him. And you didn’t have it done to you for all those years without becoming intimately familiar with the thing doing it.

Not having a need to drag this out, Dean got right to the point. He kneeled down to untie his boots, kicking them off and making sure his socks followed. It was a stupid thing, but somehow he always felt like a complete idiot standing around naked with his feet covered. Not that idiot began to touch how stupid he was being now.

He forced his hands steady as he worked his belt buckle and pants. He let his jeans fall to the floor and pushed his boxers down with them as the sickness in the pit of his stomach built. He was already hard. Despite how ill it made him, it wasn’t like he could do anything about it and he sure as hell couldn’t hide it now.

“Like I said,” Dean said as he motioned to himself. “You want it, you take it. We got a deal?”

Dean stood stiffly. His shoulders were tight, but his hands hung loosely at his side. His head was held up while he kept his eyes cast down. Alastair walked a tight circle around him with an appraising look.

“I have to say, except for that angel stain, you haven’t changed. Not one bit.”

And Alastair would know. There wasn’t a nook or cranny of him, inside or out, that Alastair and his blade weren’t fully familiar with.

“Do we got a deal or not?” Dean asked impatiently, still keeping his eyes blankly fixed ahead of him.

He knew his mistake immediately and bit his tongue too late. Raising his tone with Alastair was stepping too far out of his place. The demon moved towards him with all the measured calm of a jaguar closing in on its prey. Even though every sane part of Dean begged to flee, there was nowhere he could hide from Alastair. Not even in his own head.

Dean stood his ground and didn’t so much as raise his arms to defend himself. It would only make things worse. Instead he submitted to the beating as Alastair’s fist came down hard and fast. When it was through he was left gasping on his knees. Alastair stood over him, shaking his head critically.

“Someone has gone and forgotten his manners,” Alastair reprimanded in a singsong tone that nearly came off as playful. This was Alastair’s idea of playing.

Dean kept his head dropped to his chest, not staring at the floor, but through it. He didn’t dare stand. It wasn’t that he cared about being pummeled again. That he could take. That and a lot worse because the pain helped him to forget, or rather to remember. He remained on the ground simply because he knew it was what Alastair wanted. When Alastair wanted him up he’d tell him.

“Eyes on me.”

Dean’s eyes instantly flashed up as he was told. Alastair held his stare. Just as he saw past Alastair’s eyes he knew the demon saw right past his. Alastair had literally seen every piece of his soul.

A pleased smirk flickered over the demon’s lips and Alastair drew the dagger up to cut a slice along the ridge of Dean’s cheek. His face contorted as the blade bit through the tender skin, but he kept his head help up and his gaze guarded, yet steady. Dean blinked away the stinging moisture that tickled the corner of his eye.

“That’s my boy.” Alastair ran a deceptively gentle hand over his marred cheek, smearing the blood that ran from the cut. “Haven’t I always told you that you break beautiful?”

“Yeah,” Dean replied hoarsely.

“You don’t disappoint, Dean.”

His eyes dropped down to the scratched floorboards he knelt on not because of Alastair’s words but because the words ‘thank you’ were nearly on the tip of his own tongue.

He would be damned all over before he was going to kneel here naked and bloody and thank the son of a bitch demon that had broke him. His mind screamed that it was disgustingly pathetic, but it seemed like all he ever did was disappoint. He couldn’t even stop from disappointing himself.

The disorienting pain from the beating, the anguish that this was happening here and the fact that he had surrendered himself to the whims of Alastair somehow mixed into further arousal. He really was useless, but pathetically useless or not he still needed to get Sam out of here alive. His duty to protect his brother didn’t stop just because his mind was gone.

Alastair must have caught his glance towards the closet. “Put that angsty mind of yours to rest, Dean. You have yourself a deal, but only because you’re one of my best students, you understand.”

He did understand. Far too well and as he felt Alastair’s suffocating stare descend down his body, he knew that Alastair still had a point to prove. His jaw clenched as he kept his eyes unfocused, looking just past Alastair.

“These bodies are quite demanding now aren't they? How little control you have up here in the freezer.”

Even though he wasn’t looking directly at Alastair he caught the subtle nod. Dean’s breath quickened further as his heart pounded faster, painfully thudding in his chest. It didn’t matter what he wanted. That hadn’t mattered for a long time. Hell, even he had stopped trying to sort out what he wanted. All he knew right now was what Alastair wanted and he had to oblige. Not just for Sam. Just because he had to.

He rose to his feet, unsteady at first as his head swam. His hand wiped the stinging blood away from his eye. It was a good excuse anyway to say that was all he was wiping away. He didn’t even know at what point the tears had started to fall, but he didn’t have any more control over them than he did over anything else.

Alastair came up behind him faster than he’d expected. Dean’s breath caught in his throat as a stern hand grabbed him and directed him towards one of the tables piled with books. He was thankful for it. One less decision he had to make, not that he was keen on staring at a stack of bibles while Alastair fucked him. Dean had no doubt that God and every one of his damned angels were laughing down at him now. Screw them too.

The hand that had grabbed him with a bruising force slowly released its grip on Dean’s straining bicep even as Alastair’s other hand again brought the razor sharp metal of Ruby’s dagger to the skin of his hip. They both knew there was no need for restraining. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Dean stood still as a statue except for the fact that he couldn’t fully stop his body from trembling. He knew all too well what was coming and it was going to hurt like a son of a bitch, but he remained frozen where Alastair had positioned him secure in the thought that this was out of his hands.

His bare back was to the demon so that each slice of Ruby’s dagger was a shock he couldn’t see coming. Only when Alastair put a steadying hand on him did he know where the next cut was coming. When he had the warning, he fell into old habit and adjusted his position to give Alastair full access to whatever part of the canvas he wanted to carve bloody. He was just thankful that Alastair didn’t need silence to work.

Even though he could force himself to stand steady to what was only a comforting reminder of pain compared to what he had suffered in hell, he couldn’t stop the cries that the cuts pulled from him. He didn’t even try to bite the pained sounds back because he knew it was what Alastair wanted to hear.

The slices were coolly calculated. Not exploring, but claiming. Like Alastair's words they were placed for maximum pain with minimum damage. Alastair obviously knew this body was even more fragile than the shattered soul it housed and Dean knew the demon didn’t want to completely destroy his toy just yet.

Every muscle in his body tensed rigidly when he heard the slight rustling of fabric and the quiet release of a zipper. Without Alastair’s blade to focus on, his mind wandered desperate for any thought to latch onto. Anything that wasn’t the growing black pit inside of him or the intense sensation of the blood seeping from the wounds that covered his abused skin.

He didn’t have to be told how Alastair wanted him. Bending forward he put his hands on the table, using it to brace himself. He widened his stance and waited while anxious dread built nauseatingly inside of him.

The stray thought crossed his mind that Alastair might have highjacked an impotent pediatrician, but if that was the case the dude had taken his Viagra this morning. Dean closed his eyes and swallowed back the bile as he felt the hot erection press against the inside of his thigh.

His eyes flew open again as the dagger slid between his shoulder blades. After a surprised jerk, he settled back down so that his back was again parallel with the floor. The hot rush of blood quickly collected in the depression of his back. With a practiced hand, Alastair collected the pooling liquid. The only lubricant a demon ever needed.

A moment later fingers latched to his hips with a brutal force. It was the only warning he got, but he hadn’t expected to receive any. He wasn’t under the delusion that Alastair would give him any prepping to make this easier. If there was a more painful way to make it happen, Alastair would find it. This was about the demon reclaiming what was his.

Dean opened himself and tried to force his internal muscles to relax as best he could, but his nerves were raw and his body desperate. His body here on earth didn’t have the practice his mind had in hell. Just the first thrust alone brought a painful burning that he hadn’t been prepared for.

Even his eyes burned as the tears began to well up against his long lashes. This wasn’t supposed to happen here. Not on earth. Not when he was awake. He choked back a sob at the tearing pain inside him.

He wanted to want to vomit, but as Alastair continued his thrusts Dean couldn’t stop his body and soul from craving the familiarity, the chance to let himself go. The pain he’d forgotten he’d needed just to remember he was there.

The near sobs turned to desperate moans as he let the pain take him, embraced it as Alastair continued to bury himself in him. Dean found himself jutting his own hips back to slam into Alastair's as his body took over and his mind finally fell blissfully numb, lost completely in the physicality, in the pain and the arousal.

Unable to endure it any longer, he lifted one of his bracing arms from the table and moved the now free hand up to jerk himself off. He never reached his aching target as Alastair instead grabbed his wrist and twisted it painfully.

“Now, now,” Alastair chastised. “You must really remember to wait your turn.”

Dean’s breaths were now coming so quickly and shallowly that he was barely getting any real air. But he forced a stiff nod and returned his hand to the edge of the table. His eyes squeezed closed all the tighter.

In his mind it wasn’t a table. He wasn’t in the attic of a church on earth with his brother unconscious less than ten feet away. He was back there. Smoldering ash of flesh filling his nostrils. A calm knowing of where he belonged. To who he belonged to.

His distant mind barely felt Alastair release into him or pull out. The pain remained and Dean’s hips continued to twitch as his own body still begged for release. Despite the agonizing need he waited obediently until Alastair decided to give it. At least here on earth there were limitations on the wait period even if this did feel like an eternity.

Finally Alastair loomed over his shaking form and the demon’s hand reached down to wrap tightly around his erection. He instantly began to move his hips at a desperate pace against the friction of the grip, but Alastair’s other hand set firmly again to the back of his hip to restrict his movement. Instead Alastair set the rhythm so slow and meticulous that Dean was fairly sure it was going to kill him.

All too soon it was over. His legs were momentarily weak so he stayed braced over the table, still skirting the high of the orgasm. His head remained hung between his outstretched arms. A pink flush surfaced over his pale freckles and his lungs struggled to reclaim enough air to stop the spinning in his head. Damn he missed sex. Even at that thought he was certain that he would never be able to have it again.

As the adrenaline began to dissipate his mind began to return and the tears begged to fall for an entirely different reason. He wouldn’t let them. Not now. Not even as he felt the sickening mix of bodily fluids seep down the back of his legs.

Alastair chuckled again, a sound that had becoming perversely assuring over the decades. It didn’t matter that the sound was coming from the vocal cords of some poor sap vessel. Dean heard the true sound as much as he saw through to Alastair’s true face.

The demon set a strangely supportive hand on Dean’s heaving shoulder. “Be seeing you real soon, Dean.”

He wasn’t sure if it was a threat or a promise. Either way Dean realized that he wasn’t in any position to be giving Sam crap about Ruby because at the thought of Alastair leaving, that empty pit inside him began opening up, again threatening to swallow him.

Dean heard Sam stirring in the closet and scrambled to recover his clothing without a thought to cleaning himself up. He ignored the pained stings as he quickly pulled the rough cloth over his many wounds. Soon enough it would bleed through and Sam would know it wasn’t just his face that had been cut. But he had his layers.

It would take time for the blood to become noticeable from beneath all of them and by then he’d have a convincing lie. Something to say he was okay even though he couldn’t feel a damned thing. Nothing that mattered anyway.

He wiped the moisture from his eyes as Sam kicked open the closet door, coming out ready for a fight. Dean had just managed to slip back into his jacket and button up his jeans by the time his brother’s deeply concerned eyes fell on him.

“Where’s the demon?” Sam asked anxiously.

“Gone,” Dean replied. The word was spoken with a measured tentativeness only because he was unsure how his voice would sound.

Sam’s brow furrowed as he looked over Dean who forced his posture to straighten regardless of the pain the movement caused. His brother’s eyes stopped at his feet and Dean realized that he hadn’t remembered to put his shoes and socks back on.

“You okay?”

“I’m just fucking super.”

His voice wasn’t as trust worthy as he had hoped. Despite his attempt at casual words, his tone carried too much of the loss he felt and Sam’s look grew suspicious. Dean just waved him off before his brother could say anything else. Dean didn’t want to hear it. He just plain couldn’t deal with this right now.

“You should’ve seen the other guy,” Dean remarked with a forced smirk. When his brother still looked unconvinced he finally met Sam’s eyes, forcing his own eyes to remain blank. In a more serious tone he added, “I’m okay, Sam. Really.”

It was a flat out lie, but he was getting better at those every day. Everything hurt, it was all bleaker than hell itself and again everyone was going to be looking to him. Sam, Anna and all heaven’s good little soldiers, of which he was supposed to be one, would be waiting for him to fix this sorry excuse for a world and he couldn’t even fix himself.

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know who or what he was anymore. Over the decades in hell, Alastair had woven himself so deeply into him that it was hard to know where one ended and the other began. All this while he had just been trying to hold onto fading memories of himself. It would only figure that the one that had stripped everything that was him away would be the only one that could make him feel whole again.


End file.
